Ronald Reagan

Former Vice President Walter Mondale has been released from the hospital after being treated for the flu. Mayo Clinic spokeswoman Kelley Luckstein said Mondale was treated Friday night for flu and cold symptoms and was doing well enough to be released on Saturday.

The third Monday of every January is one of ten national holidays that government employees get every year. Most children have no school and every state and federal employee receives a paid day off. The first official observation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday was on January 20, 1986 – 18 years after the Civil Rights leader was shot. But David Chang, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Minnesota, says the idea for the holiday came just four days after the assassination in 1968.

Minnesota’s new House Speaker Kurt Zellers has a degree in political science and spent much of his adult life working in politics, including a stint as communications director for former Republican U.S. Senator Rod Grams.